20 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
of Glück’s work, focusing particularly on The Wild Iris, whose poems meditate
upon death and the mutability of life. Students should pay particular attention to
the ways the flowers in the poems suggest or voice a divine force beyond human
comprehension. How do these voices critique the gardener-poet and humanity
in general? How does Glück employ poetic form and narrative reflection as a
way to overcome fears about death? For helpful starting points, students can
consult Morris, chapter 8, “Errand in the Spiritual Wilderness: The Wild Iris
as Contemporary Prayer Sequence” (pp. 191–230), and William V. Davis. Alan
Williamson’s discussion of the poem “Celestial Music” in his essay “Splendor and
Mistrust” (in Diehl, pp. 63–73) also provides useful insights.RESOURCES
Primary Works
Grace Cavalieri, “In the Magnificent Region of Courage: An Interview with
Louise Glück,” Beltway Poetry Quarterly, 10 (Fall 2009) <washingtonart.
com/beltway/gluckinterview.html> [accessed 20 November 2009].
Transcript of a 2006 interview that originally aired on the NPR series The Poet
and the Poem from the Library of Congress. Glück discusses The Wild Iris, the inter-
disciplinary aspects of her poetry, and her “two methods of writing.”
Dana Levin, “For a Dollar: Louis Glück in Conversation,” The Academy of Ameri-
can Poets http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20961 [accessed
20 November 2009].
Originally appearing in American Poet, 36 (2009), includes discussion of Glück’s
influences and the collection A Village Life, about which she says: “That’s what
the book feels like to me: the whole of a life, but not progressive, not narrative:
simultaneous.”
Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco Press, 1994).
Focuses on Glück’s thematic, academic, popular, and lyric concerns. The collec-
tion includes sections on influences she finds crucial to both contemporary poetry
at large and her own.
Criticism
Mary Kate Azcuy, “Louise Glück, Feminism and Nature in Firstborn’s “The Egg,”
in Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View, edited by Barbara J. Cook (Lan-
ham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 57–66.
Close reading of the three-part poem that reveals how the poet moves away
from traditional spirituality (which is patriarchal) through an understanding of
the relationship between the mythic and the environment which redefines the
feminine.
William V. Davis, “‘Talked to by Silence’: Apocalyptic Yearnings in Louise
Glück’s The Wild Iris,” Christianity and Literature, 52 (2002).
Examines what is described as the “three powerful and visionary apocalyptic
sequences” in The Wild Iris, to underscore the poet’s “craving” for the immutable.